Thursday, October 20, 2005

Chapter 5.

Nime told them what she had seen, and did dances of apology and sorrow and told them what she had seen.

Mr. Azure looked up, anticipating a block of bark to fall on them at any time.

Mrs. Scarlet was nearly in a panic, “but they got it wrong, didn’t they? They didn’t know what they were saying, did they? They couldn’t get the message up the tree. Right? Mr. Azure?” Mrs. Scarlet gave a look over to Illy and Lilly.

Mr. Azure looked up at the tree again. “No movement yet. One way or another. If the message goes through, and the south main branch gets lowered by ten degrees, we may not get enough energy to even form seeds.”

Caruso looked brighter, “Like I always say, it can always get worse.”

At that particular moment Illy and Lilly were joined by Mr. Azure and Mrs. Scarlet in a shared dislike of Mr. Caruso. That changed when Caruso said, “One thing now is that things are bad. And the worst thing we can do is start second guessing ourselves or assigning blame. We’ve got good flowers in this patch. We’ve got Mr. Azure, who found the problem. Without him we wouldn’t even know anything was wrong. And we’ve got the girls, who thought to ask for help, and are full of good ideas. And we’ve got Mrs. Scarlet, who could get a bee to look at her all day long cause she’s so good looking. And we’ve got Nime, and it looks like she’s flown off already.”

Indeed. Nime was no-where to be seen.

Mrs. Scarlet said, “Caruso’s right. We’ve got a talented group of flowers here. We certainly do. The worst thing to do is to...” She turned to Caruso and said, “thank you,” so that only he could hear (but he didn’t). “Now, it seems that the mushrooms are not on our side of things. They’d rather starve us of sun than help, I don’t know why, but they cannot be trusted.”

“They want our territory.”

They turned to Mr. Azure. Caruso said, “Well? What was that?”

Mr. Azure said, “I was rather afraid of this. Mushrooms live off dead things. They can live on Max’s north side because that was where he was damaged in the lighting and because it is dark. This area here,” Mr. Azure swept his leaves around, “is filled with very rich soil. It is perfect soil for all growing things, plants and mushrooms a like. At present the amount of light favors pants, but only barely. If the south branch is to come down by ten degrees, then next season this area will be covered in moss. The season after that, mushrooms will begin to grow. I didn’t think the mushrooms would realize this so quickly. To even think of sending down bark for mushroom food is a very smart move. I must give them that.”

“What about us,” asked Lilly.

“If these things come to pass, we will not be here. Let’s hope that Max does not get the mushroom’s message. The only thing we can do is wait for morning. I suggest we all go to sleep. There is nothing we can do about any of this for the time being. We’ve set things in motions. Max knows we’re here. So do the mushrooms.”